N.D.Ga.: Dog sniff at the front door of a specific apartment unit qualified for curtilage under Jardines

A dog sniff at the front door of a specific apartment unit qualified for curtilage under Jardines. The policy reasons behind it still apply to a particular apartment’s door. Nonetheless, there was some other information on which the officers relied, and the good faith exception applies. United States v. Hopkins, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88038 (N.D.Ga. July 6, 2015):

Here, the Court must determine if Officer Fear had an express or implied license to conduct a drug sniff in an area shared by only two residences. I don’t believe he did. As noted by the Court in Jardines, there may be an implied license for strangers such as Girl Scouts or trick-or-treaters — or police officers — to approach a front door and knock, “[b]ut introducing a trained police dog to explore the area around the house in hopes of discovering incriminating evidence is something else.” Id. at 1416. While not as grand, the cement slab in front of Defendant’s residence was, in effect, his “front porch.” The fact that the space is shared with one other unit does not expand the scope of the “implicit license” which has become the “habit of the country.” Furthermore, I cannot find on this record that an express license was granted by the complex’s management to conduct dog sniffs at the cracks of its residents’ front doors. I conclude this space is protected curtilage, there was no express or implied license to conduct a dog sniff, and the dog sniff constituted an unlawful Fourth Amendment search.